A new twist developed Wednesday in the fate of Denton’s ordinance deprioritizing marijuana enforcement.
Last week, Travis County District Judge Jan Soifer dismissed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against the city of Austin over an ordinance to deprioritize misdemeanor marijuana enforcement due to lack of jurisdiction.
Paxton filed lawsuits in January against Austin and four other cities — Denton, Elgin, Killeen and San Marcos — over their marijuana ordinances that he claimed violated state law.
Ground Game Texas, an Austin-based nonprofit behind the marijuana ordinances, has called Paxton’s lawsuits “an anti-democratic assault on the constitutional authority of Texas Home Rule cities to set local law enforcement priorities.”
“In each of the cities sued, a supermajority of voters adopted a policy to deprioritize marijuana enforcement in order to reduce racially-biased law enforcement outcomes and save scarce public resources for higher priority public safety needs,” Julie Oliver, executive director for Ground Game Texas, said in a late January news release.
Ground Game Texas followed the early February lead of Decriminalize Denton, a local nonprofit behind Denton’s marijuana ordinance, and filed a plea in intervention in Paxton’s lawsuit against Austin in May, two years after 85% of voters approved Austin’s marijuana ordinance.
Before the Austin-based nonprofit’s plea could be heard, Soifer dismissed Paxton’s lawsuit and granted Austin’s plea to jurisdiction on June 12, as Denton attorney Richard Gladden told the Denton Record-Chronicle on Thursday afternoon.
Gladden is representing Decriminalize Denton and former Denton City Council member Deb Armintor.
“Procedurally, the judge followed settled law and the judge in Denton County didn’t — at the behest of the attorney general’s office,” Gladden said.
In late May, District Judge Crystal Levonius of the 481st District Court decided to move forward with Gladden’s original petition in intervention — instead of determining whether she had jurisdiction — and struck down Gladden’s petition.
Now, in light of Soifer’s recent ruling, Gladden said he plans to file a motion to vacate Levonius’ late May ruling as soon as the next court hearing has been set.
Gladden said the case would be over by now if Levonious had ruled on jurisdiction, like he said she is required to do, before doing anything else.
Not ruling on jurisdiction first, Gladden said, causes any other motion the judge rules on to be null and void if it’s determined that the state nor the court has jurisdiction.
Gladden said he plans to appeal if his motion to vacate isn’t granted.
In a statement on Monday, Armintor pointed out that Decriminalize Denton was happy to learn Soifer had ruled district courts in Texas do not have jurisdiction to consider Paxton’s challenge to the ordinances that deprioritized misdemeanor marijuana cases.
“It’s unfortunate that our District Judge in Denton County ruled to strike Decrim Denton’s intervention in the Denton case without first determining whether the Denton County Court even has jurisdiction,” Armintor said in the statement. “We objected to this sequence of events before the Court in Denton, and we intend to file a motion to reconsider with the Denton County Court.”
Gladden argued in a March 18 court document that, under the state constitution, neither Paxton nor the district court has standing to challenge or have jurisdiction to render an “advisory 0pinion” on the legality of a municipal policy or ordinance that never has been and likely never will be applied by the city of Denton or Denton police.
Despite more than 70% of Denton voters passing the marijuana ordinance, also known as “Proposition B,” in early November 2022, Denton police have not been deprioritizing misdemeanor marijuana cases.
Between early November 2022 and April 2024, Denton police have issued 223 citations or arrests and cited and arrested 43 people, according to the most recent data available on the city’s website.
Denton’s marijuana ordinance also doesn’t have the support of the city manager’s office or the majority of council members, who declined to pass a similar ordinance in June 2023.
City Manager Sara Hensley issued a detailed memo early on Nov. 9, 2022, the day after the ordinance passed, to proclaim that the city would not be following what voters wanted.
“I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll say it again, I do not direct the police chief. He gets his oath from the state of Texas,” Hensley told council members in early March 2023. “I could tell him to break the law, but that is not what I will do as a professional.”
It’s why Gladden argued in a Feb. 5 court document that it was important for Armintor and Decriminalize Denton to become defendants in the case given the city’s negative stance on the ordinance.
“It is also likely Defendant City of Denton will align itself with the interests advocated by Plaintiff State of Texas in this case,” Gladden wrote in February. “Indeed, based on its prior conduct, Defendant City of Denton can reasonably be expected, in due course, to overtly or covertly collude with Plaintiff State of Texas in an attempt to acquire an outcome in this case that serves only their mutually shared interests, and not the interests of Intervenors.”
Dustin Sternbeck, the city’s chief communications officer, declined to discuss the case due to pending litigation.
Elgin, which is represented in its case by the same law firm representing Denton, is working toward Paxton’s goals, Gladden said.
On May 24, Elgin city officials agreed with Paxton’s demands and will be making the voter-approved ordinance to deprioritize misdemeanor marijuana null and void, according to a May 28 court document.
In Elgin’s case, the district judge hasn’t signed off on the settlement agreement yet.
Gladden said that the judge is waiting until the July 10 court hearing to issue his rulings on the settlement agreement and Paxton’s request to strike Decriminalize Elgin’s petition to intervene.
“The judge would have to approve jurisdiction first before he can approve the settlement,” Gladden said.
